Baked eggplant with fried rice

I looked at the recipes here and here. I liked the idea of breadcrumbs in the first one, plus I still had some from leftover garlic bread I crushed a while back. From the second one, I liked the addition of cheese and a herb. So I put the two ideas together and made up my own recipe.

lovely eggplants

Eggplant, also known as aubergine! They have such lovely colours. I had 3 of them but for this dish I used 1½. They were big, I didn’t want to cook them all in case I messed up!

Slice the eggplant across into discs, remove the skin, rinse through some water and lay them on a plate or tray. Sprinkle a little bit of salt on both sides.

My mother told me that they can be bitter. Letting them sit for a while with that sprinkle of salt helps to remove/neutralise the bitterness. But if you like the bitterness then you can skip this (some people do!).

sprinkled with salt, resting

In the mean time you can prepare the other stuff. I had placed water on the stove for cooking the rice, it was now boiling so I added salt, cooking oil and the rice.

rice cooking

We will coat the eggplant with breadcrumbs first, fry it a little, then layer it with the tomatoes cheese and basil, then bake it!

So prepare the assembly line!

First, beat the egg with the milk and place some in a small bowl for dipping. Next to it place another small bowl with the breadcrumbs.

egg and milk mix, bread crumbs

Next is the frying pan with some oil.

frying pan ready

Then the sliced tomatoes and grated cheese

sliced tomatoesgrated cheese

The oven dish for baking, coated with cooking oil

dish for the oven

and fresh basil, washed and ready.

basil

Coat the baking dish with oil evenly, on the bottom and on the sides. Then put down a layer of the sliced tomatoes, covering as much was possible.

layer of tomatoessprinkle some cheese and tear some basil on top, then drizzle a little bit of olive oil (very little)dip the eggplant in the milk and egg mixthen coat with breadcrumbsarrange as many as possible in the frying pan. Cook on medium heat until the breadcrumbs brown, turn the eggplant to keep from burningarrange the fried eggplant in the baking dish as you remove them from the frying panwhen done with all the eggplant, tear some basil leaves on top, then a layer of tomatoes, then cheese and a drizzle of olive oil (very little)place in the oven, uncovered, at 200°C for 20 minutes

While the eggplant is baking you can finish up the rice. It should be cooked already. Take it off the fire. This will be a very simple fried rice. I’m not even sure it’s really fried rice, but I know it’s tasty (^_^)

chop some onionsstart cooking them in another pot with some oil on medium to high heat (depending on how closely you’ll watch them) till they carameliseadd teaspoon of cardamom.

How much onions and cardamon you use depends on how much rice you cooked, and how strong you want the flavour. I used 2 onions and 1/3 cup of rice

once you’ve stirred in the cardamom add the cooked rice and stir till it’s all evenly mixeddone!ready!served!

HusbandRating:very nice colours, appetizing, or maybe I was just hungrythe eggplant was good

it smelled so good while it was baking, and the taste did not disappoint at all